
The Influence of Aeschylus and 

Euripides on the Structure and 

Content of Swinburne's Atalanta 

in Calydon and Erechtheus 



BY MARION CLYDE WIER 



A DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS 

FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 



/ 



GEORGE WAHR, Publisher 

ANN ARBOR, MICH. 

1920 



The Influence of Aeschylus and 

Euripides on the Structure and 

Content of Swinburne's Atalanta 

in Calydon and Erechtheus 



BY MARION CLYDE WIER 



A DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTEI) IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS 

FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 



GEORGE WAHR, Publisher 

ANN ARBOR, MICH. 
1920 






\^ 



GEORGE BANTA PUBLISHING COMPANY 
MENASHA, WIS. 

1920 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

APR 8-1921 

0OCUIVItNT& UiViSlON 



CONTENTS 



Swinburne's debt to Classical literature 1 

His scholarship 1 

His preferences 2 

Characteristics 2 

THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS 

Manner of imitation 4 

Motto 4 

Refrain 4 

Title 5 

STYLE 

Piled-up adjectives 5 

Irony 6 

Litotes 6 

Puns 7 

Word order 7 

Epic touch 8 

Force 8 

Structure 8 

THE INFLUENCE OF EURIPIDES 

Swinburne's knowledge of Euripides 10 

Swinburne's use of Euripides' plots 10 

Swinburne's use of Euripides' fragments 10 

Sentimentality and rhesis 13 

Sophistry 16 

Rhetoric 17 

Eros tyrannus 17 

The supreme evil 18 

MIXED INFLUENCE 
Characterization 

Althaea 22 

Meleager 38 

Erechtheus , 44 

Praxithea 46 

Attitude to the gods 27 



SWINBURNE'S DEBT TO CLASSICAL LITERATURE 

Swinburne's Debt Conceded. Swinburne's debt to Greek 
literature is conceded by all who are competent to express an 
opinion on the subject. Skeptics may settle the question by a 
casual reading of such works as Phaedra, Itylus, Anactoria, Hymn 
to Proserpine, Sapphics, At Eleusis, Hymn to Man, Genesis, 
Teiresias, The last Oracle, To Victor Hugo, Two Leaders, The 
Armada, Neap-tide, Thalassius, On the Cliffs, Song for the Cen- 
tenary of Walter Savage Landor, Athens, Herse, Nine Years Old, 
Aperotos Eros, and Nympholept. The evidence will be con- 
vincing. But in addition to these we have Atalanta in Calydon 
and Erechtheus, both in their technique Greek plays of a high 
order. Of Erechtheus Edmond Gosse says: "It is the most 
Greek of all the compositions of Swinburne, because it follows, 
with the greatest success, closely and yet vividly, the exact classical 
models. It is not merely Greek, but it is passionately Athenian, 
arid Athens is considered, not as a theme of antiquarian curiosity, 
but as the living symbol of the virtue of citizenship," Woodberry 
says of Swinburne: "He moved toward a reproduction of both 
the Greek and the English antique. Atalanta in Calydon was his 
first experiment in this way, but Erechtheus, his second Greek play, 
was more perfect in the success that it aimed at." Swinburne's 
method of using Aeschylus and Euripides to facilitate the attain- 
ment of this end, it is the object of the following pages to make 
clear. 

Scholarship. Both friends and critics attest Swinburne's 
scholarship, — a scholarship that not only comprehended the 
literature of his own and foreign languages, but extended even to 
a facility in the use of them as media of literary expression. "No 
English poet has ever had so wide and familiar acquaintance with 
the poetry of foreign climes. He began with a felicitous command 
of the classical and romance languages. He took the Taylorian 
prize, in his college days, for French and Italian, and won other 
similar distinction in the ancient tongues. He has written, as a 
poet, in Greek, Latin, and French with literary mastery." (Wood- 
berry.) Edmund Gosse voices the same opinion, as does Swin- 
burne's lifelong friend Redesdale. Ruskin says, "He knows Greek, 



2 THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

Latin, French as well as he knows English — can write splendid 
verses with equal ease in any of the four languages — knows nearly- 
all the best literature of the four languages as well as I know — well 
— better than I know anything." 

Assimilation of Greek Authors. At Eton Swinburne was 
devoted to that charming anthology, the old Eton Poetae Graeci, 
to which he owed his earliest introduction to Theocritus and 
Alcaeus, and on which was founded his life-long passion for Sappho. 
(Gosse.) The same writer tells us that Swinburne was so devoted 
to Aeschylus that he carried in his mind practically the whole of 
the Oresteia, and asserts that there are those still living who bear 
witness to his ability to quote Aeschylus as long as any auditor 
had the patience to listen to him. ''He delighted in repeating 
other poetry, and was particularly ready to spout the dramas of 
Aeschylus, when he would gradually become intoxicated by the 
sonority of the Greek, and would dance about the room in the 
choral passages, making a very surprising noise." 

Assimilation of Greek. The Greek elegiacs prefixed to 
Atalanta in Calydon reveal the extent of Swinburne's early 
assimilation of the diction and phraseology of that language, 
while his more intensely Greek Erechtheus shows how this process 
went on through the years that followed the composition of his 
first Greek tragedy. Of the significance of this gift Swinburne 
himself seems well aware, for he says: "The faculty of assimila- 
tion is most important and is to be distinguished from imitation. 
It is one of the surest and strongest signs of strong and original 
genius." 

Preferences. With Swinburne's love of Greek went a 
strongly marked preference for certain Greek authors and a dislike 
of others that was equally intense. To him Aeschylus was the 
"godlike father of tragic poetry," while Euripides was "the 
clumsiest of botchers that ever floundered through his work as 
dramatist." But in spite of his distaste, he felt the spell of the 
botcher, from whom he borrowed, on occasion, as freely as he 
borrowed from the godlike father of tragic song. 
Characteristics In fact a marked characteristic of Swinburne's 
tragic style is the introduction of Aeschylean 
ideas treated in the Euripidean manner, — the presentation of a 
character cast in the Aeschylean mould, but endowed with 
Euripidean psychology. 



THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 3 

SWINBURNE'S DEBT TO AESCHYLUS 

Swinburne's passion for Aeschylus, unlike Dionysus' pothos 
Euripidou, underwent neither change nor moderation. Throughout 
his long career he regarded the Greek tragedian as a god who 
towered above other gods; and it was from his temple that he got 
the inspiration that bore up his own song in its most sublime 
flights. In both prose and verse he sings his praise whenever 
occasion arises to speak of what is most precious and potent in 
the hearts of men. To quote him while commending another 
is high praise. Speaking of Victor Hugo, he says: "his hand 
has never been firmer, his note more clear than now: 

en yap deodev KaraTveUi 

■weiQca ixokirav 

okKq. ^v(j.<f>VTOs al<j}v. 
A character of Hugo's he pictures as "One of those Aeschylean 
women, a monstrous goddess, whose tone of voice 'gave a sort 
of Promethean grandeur to her furious and amorous words,' 
who had in her the tragic and titanic passion of the women of the 
Eleusinian feasts 'seeking the Satyrs under the stars.' " And 
again "It is Aeschylus . . . who fills the bitter air of the Scythian 
ravine with music of wings and words more sweet than sleep to 
the weary, with notes of heavenly pity and love unsubduable by 
fear; who shows us with one touch of terrible tenderness the maiden 
agony of Iphigenia, smiting with the piteous dart of her eye each 
one of the ministers of sacrifice, in dumb show as of a picture 
striving to speak to them ; who throws upon the most fearful scene 
in all tragedy a flash of pathos unspeakable, when Clytemnestra 
bares before the sword of her son the breast that suckled him as 
he slept." He never wearies of "the music that Aeschylus set 
to verse, the music that made mad, the upper notes of the psalm 
strong and shrill as a sea-wind, the 'bull-voiced' bellowing under- 
song of those dread choristers from somewhere out of sight, the 
tempest of tambourines giving back thunder to the thunder, the 
fury of divine lust that thickened with human blood the hill- 
streams of Cithaeron." With what delight does he call attention 
to his translation from the Agamemnon. 

Ah, ah the doom (thou knowest whence rang that wail) 

Of the shrill nightingale ! 

(From whose wild lips thou knowest that wail was thrown) 



4 THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

For round about her have the great gods cast 
A wing-borne body and clothed her close and fast 
With a sweet life that hath no part in moan. 
But me, for me (how hadst thou heart to hear) 
Remains a sundering with the two-edged Spear. 

Referring to Aeschylus' metaphor of a lion's whelp, he sings: 

The best men's tongue that ever glory knew 

Called that a drop of dew 

Which from the breathing creature's kindly womb 

Came forth, a blameless bloom. 

We have no word, as had those men most high, 

To call a baby by. (Herse) 

In Comparisons he uses the figure again. 

Child, when they say that others 
Have been or are like you, 
Babes fit to be your brothers. 
Sweet human drops of dew, 
Bright fruit of mortal mothers, 
What should one say or do? 

Manner of Imitation, Sub-title or Motto. Swinburne 
sometimes states his theme in the form of a line of Aeschylus 
quoted under the title of a poem. As a sub-title of the Ode on 
the Proclamation of the French Republic we read 

aiXivov atXivov ei-rrk, t6 5'e5 vi/carco. 

Refrain. This line is also used as a refrain in A Year's 
Burden : 

Cry wellaway, but well befall the right. 

Under The Litany of Nations occur two lines from The Supplices, 
which he translates at the close: 

fia ya na 7a ^oq. 
(po^epdv oLTroTpeire 

He uses as a motto for Two Leaders Eumenides 1034-5 which 
he translates as a close for the last stanza. 

Gk) honored hence, go home, 
Night's childless children; here your hour is done; 
Pass with the stars and leave us with the sun. 



THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 5 

Aeschylus enjoys the company of Pindar on the title page of 
Erechtheus, and also supplies the theme of An Autumn Vision: 

^e<f)vpov yiyiiVTOs avpq.. 

Title. Occasionally we find an Aeschylean phrase used as 
the real title of a poem, as Aperotos Eros (Choe. 600). 

STYLE 

Piled-up Adjectives. Swinburne often imitates Aeschylus' 
piled-up adjective effects. These effects exhibit various degrees 
of complication. 

The caught-up choked dry laughters — 

And her mouth's sad red heavy rose all through — 

By the tideless dolorous inland sea — 

White-eyed and poison-finned, shark-toothed and setpentine- 

curled — 
A star upon your birthday burned, 

Whose fierce serene 
Red pulseless planet never yearned 
In heaven, Faustine. 
Villon our sad bad glad mad brother's name — 
Bird of the bitter bright gray golden mom — 

The adorable sweet living marvelous strange light that lightens us — 
The sea-forsaken forlorn deep wrinkled salt slanting stretches of sand — 

With the last compare Aeschylus, Supp. 798 ff. 

Would that I had a seat in the air on high where the vapory clouds turn into 
snow; or that there were some smooth inaccessible summit-hid solitary hanging 
vulture-haunted rock to be witness of my plunge into the depths below. 

This usage is common in Aeschylus. See Persae 316, 940, 855, 
and two very fine examples, Agamemnon, 154-5; 192-7. Swin- 
burne may have had the last passage in mind when he wrote: 

but we for all our good things, we 
Have at their hands which fill all these folk full, 
Death, barrenness, child-slaughter, curses, cares. 
Sea-leaguer and land-shipwreck; 



and 



This fair live youth I give you to be slain, 
Spent, shed, poured out, and perish; 



6 THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

Swinburne sometimes abuses the device, as: 

what hath he, 
The man that hath no country? Gods nor man 
Have such to friend, j'oked beast-like to base life, 
Vile, fruitless, grovelling at the foot of death. 
Landless and kinless thralls of no man's blood, 
Unchilded and unmothered, abject limbs 
That breed things abject; but who loves on earth 
Not friend, wife, husband, father, mother, child. 
Nor loves his own life for his own land's sake. 
But only this thing more, more this than all. 
He loves all well, and well of all is loved. 
And this love lives forever. 

Dramatic Irony. Swinburne is quite Aeschylean in his 
employment of dramatic irony. At the close of the prologue of 
the Atalanta the speaker prays to Artemis: 

"Help, and give honor, and to mine hounds good speed J' This 
"good speed" is echoed with grim irony by Meleager at the close of 
his first speech where he prays: 

That this great hunt with heroes for the hounds ^ 
May leave thee memorable and us well sped. 

A fine example is Althaea's fond hope for little Helen and Clytem- 
nestra, when Meleager pictures to her their sweet childishness: 

Sweet days befall them and good loves and lords 
And tender and temperate honors of the hearth, 
Peace, and a perfect life and blameless bed. 

There is an Aeschylean double meaning in Althaea's cry when 
she learns that the boar is dead: 



And later. 



Wherefore be glad and all ye give much thanks, 
Yor fallen is all the trouble of Calydon. 



Some bring flowers and crown 
These gods and all the lintel, and shed wine. 
Fetch sacrifice and slay; /or heaven is good.' 



Litotes. Litotes occurs with Aeschylean frequency. The 
following are characteristic examples: 

Where the old winds cease not blowing, and all the night 
Thunders, and day is no delight to men. 



THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 7 

and 

And in their moist and multitudinous flower 
Slept no soft sleep, with violent visions fed, 
The blind bulk of the immeasurable beast. 

The following is an example of irony and litotes combined. Althaea 
addresses her dead brothers, just slain by Meleager. 

O brethren, O my father's sons, of me 
Well-loved and well-reputed, I should weep 
Tears dearer than the dear blood drawn from you 
But that / hiow you not uncomjorted, 
Sleeping no shameful sleep however slain, 
For my son surely hath avenged you dead. 

Puns. The Greek fondness for punning on proper names 
appears also in Swinburne. A few examples will make this clear. 
Althaea and the chorus pun on the name Meleager. 

Althaea: Wert thou not called Meleager from this womb? 
Chorus: A grievous huntsman hath it bred to thee. 

Speaking of herself, Althaea says: 

My name, that was a healing, it is changed. 
My name is a consuming. 

So Erechtheus speaks of his antagonist. 

Son of the sea's lord and our first-born foe, 
Eumolpus; nothing sweet in ears of thine 
The music of his making; 

Word Order. Swinburne often betrays his Greek cast of 
mind by his word order. This is particularly noticeable in the 
position of proper nouns, which often close a phrase at the begin- 
ning of a line. In the prologue of Erechtheus we find: 

A strange growth grafted on our natural soil, 
A root of Thrace in Eleusinian earth, 
Set for no comfort to the kindly land, 
Son of the sea's lord and our first-born foe, 

Eumolpus; 



and 



Then one shot happier, the Cadmean seer, 

Amphiaraus; 



This position of the participle is also note worthy. See Atalanta 
1363, 



8 - THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

And all they praised the gods with mightier heart, 
Zeus, and all gods, but chiefest Artemis, 
Seeing; 

And Erechtheus, 267 

I have not heart to honor, or dare hold 
More than I hold thee of the gods in hate, 
Hearing; 

For a similar Aeschylean usage see Sept. 412: 

airapTcov 5' air' avhpCiv, oiv "Ap7]s kipeiaaTO, 

MeXdi^tTnros. 

and Sept. 532, 545; Persae, 206, 255; Prom. 369; Agam. 513, 813, 
1436; Eum. 7, 8. 

Epic Touch. Swinburne resembles Aeschylus in the employ- 
ment of epic reminiscences and the atmosphere of the epic. The 
Iliad stands open in the second episode of Atalanta, where Althaea 
and Meleager review the gathering of the huntsmen; the clang of 
arms resounds in the battle with the boar. In this episode we 
get also a complete catalogue of heroes engaged in the hunt. The 
thunder of battle in Erechtheus fairly outroars that of the Septem. 

Force. In addition to these Aeschylean qualities we find 
another, force; — force in diction, metaphor, versification, charac- 
terization, and action, that is distinctly Aeschylean. This is 
apparent in Atalanta in Calydon, and also in Erechtheus. Al- 
though the former transgresses by its length the proper measure 
of a Greek play, it moves rapidly and unerringly; it is full of the 
atmosphere of the heroic, and of the potency of divinity. It 
presents the inevitable laws of destiny, even working them out 
before our eyes. In Erechtheus we are made aware of strength 
of character great enough to impel every member of the most 
noble family of Athens to self-sacrifice for dear 'mother land.' 

Dramatic Structure. A careful examination of Atalanta 
in Calydon and Erechtheus will reveal their Aeschylean model. 
The prologue, parodos, episodes, and stasima are structurally 
Aeschylean and are motivated in the true Aeschylean manner 
and reveal the Aeschylean unity which makes it almost impossible 
to separate a passage from its context without injuring the whole. 



THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 



EURIPIDEAN INFLUENCE 

Swinburne always affected a hatred of Euripides. Of this 
Gosse says: 

Swinburne's hatred of Euripides was never expressed more violently than 
when he was writing Erechtheus, perhaps because he was unable to forget that he 
was using a theme which had already passed through the hands of Euripides. 
Indeed, he was not merely fully aware of, but grudgingly consented to adopt 
the argument saved for us by the orator Lycurgus, and the long fragment, a speech 
of Praxithea, which are enough to give us some inkling of Euripides' treatment. A 
clumsy reviewer described Swinburne's play as a "translation from Euripides," 
ignorant of the fact that the supposed original disappeared, save for the bit pre- 
served by Lycurgus, before the christian era. Swinburne was too furious to see 
how funny this blunder was, but it provoked from him a private protest of great 
importance. In a letter to a friend (Jan. 2, 1876) he said: "A fourth form boy 
could see that as far as Erechtheus can be said to be modeled after any body, it is 
modeled throughout after the ep^rliest style of Aeschylus. I did introduce (instead 
of a hint and a verse or two acknowledged in my notes) a good deal of the 'long 
and noble fragment' referred to, into Praxithea's first long speech, but the trans- 
lated verses (I must say it) were so palpably and pitiably inferior both in thought 
and expression to the rest, that the first persons I read that part of the play to in 
MS., knowing nothing of Greek, remarked the falling-off at once — the discrepancy 
and blot on the face of my work — so I excised the sophist, only keeping a hint 
or two of his best lines. If this sounds 'Outrecuidant' or savouring of 'Surquedry' 
you may remember that I have always maintained it is far easier to overtop Euripi- 
des by the head and shoulder than to come up to the waist of Sophocles or the knee 
of Aeschylus." 

He preserved this prejudice against Euripides from school time to the grave 
and he always asserted that he was supported in it by the conversation of Jowett. 
Neither the stoicism nor the scepticism of Euripides was agreeable to Swinburne, 
and what did not please him excessively he was apt to reject altogether. 

In Swinburne's Studies in Prose and Poetry we find the 
following: 

The critic who once wrote to me and rejoiced my very soul by writing "I have 
been reading Euripides lately and still retain my old and bad opinion of him — so- 
phist, sentimentalist, sensationahst — no Greek in the better sense of the term." 

It was all I could do on another occasion to win from him an admission of 
the charm and grace and sweetness of the shorter and sweeter lyrics which redeem 
in some measure the reputation of the dreariest of playwrights, — if that term be not 
over complimentary for the clumsiest of botchers that ever floundered through his 
work as dramatist. 

"I have been reading Euripides again," he said, "and I think even less of him 
than I did : he is immoral when he is irreligious, and when he is religious he is more 
immoral still." Pages of his note-books are filled with depreciative criticisms 

Cf. Life of Benjamin Jowelt, Vol. 2, p. 68, 



10 THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

of the poet. "Monotonous, insipid, feeble, immoral; endless commonplace — 
sophisticated and affected in expression, as well as in thought — undignified and 
exaggerated — Homer and other tragedians mixed with puerilities." These are 
general criticisms, and the same spirit appears in the examination of each play. 
Thus of the Orestes he observes: "Absolute want of poetical justice in the Orestes; 
no reason for the treatment of Menelaus and Helen except that they are only 
S3Tnpa:thizing, and therefore said to be false friends; still less for the treatment of 
Hermione — gross improbability! Orestes and Electra are said to be carefully 
watched, and yet they have Helen in their power, and her foreign guards. The 
condition in which the spectator's mind is left in all, or nearly all Euripides' plays is 
wholly unsatisfactory." 

This probably accounts, in great measure, for Swinburne's 
opinion of Euripides, and he could not have had him in mind 
when he spoke of a writer renewing 'for us the ancient life of 
his models, not by mechanical and servile transcript as of a copy- 
ing clerk, but by loving and reverent emulation as of an original 
fellow-craftsman. ' 

Knowledge of Euripides. But whatever his opinion of 
Euripides, his knowledge of his works was evidently great, and 
whether he made use of that knowledge in a spirit of reverent 
emulation, it is impossible to say; at any rate he certainly made 
free use of it. 

Plots. Both of his plots are based on Euripidean plays. 
aoifos 'EvpLTri^rjs opdfxa irepl tov avTCV MeXeajpov e^edero, Eur. fr. 
Meleager, and reference has been made to the fragments of 
his Erechtheus, preserved by Lycurgus. Of Meleager we have, 
in the edition that was available for Swinburne, fragments that 
total sixty complete lines and four half lines. Of these Swinburne 
used in all twenty-eight lines. For the motto of the play he chose 
fragment 536, 

Treat well the living; every man, once dead. 
Is dust and shadow; naught to nothing fled. 

Swinburne must have had this idea in mind 
The Fragments of in several passages in the play, particularly 
THE Meleager in the last speech of Meleager himself. 

Fragment 519 gave him not one hint but 
several. 520 served as a beginning of the chorus' description of 
the king's sacrifice. Swinburne makes use of the pun on the 
name Meleager, which occurs in fragment 521, and is, according 
to Plato, bad etymology. Swinburne has done in this instance 



THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 11 

what is rather the usual thing for him, — he had made two lines 
of one. Althaea asks, 

Wast thou not called Meleager from this womb? 
to which the chorus replies, 

A grievous huntsman hath it bred for thee. 
Fr. 521 Meleager thou, for grievous is thy hunting. 

Althaea, watching the heroes, asks, 

But who shows next an eagle wrought in gold 
That flames and beats broad wings against the sun 
And with void mouth gapes after emptier prey? 

Meleager replies, 

Know by that sign the reign of Telamon 
Between the fierce mouths of the encountering brine 
On the straight reefs of twice-washed Salamis. 
Althaea 

For like one great of hand he bears himself 
Vine-chapleted, with savours of the sea, 
Glittering as wine and moving as a wave. 

Fr. 534 Telamon, eagle of gold upon his shield, 

A barrier against the beast, with clustering grapes 
His head enwreathed, to honor Salamis, 
His land of goodty vines. 

The same fragment characterizes Atalanta, and shows in what 
repute she stood, and possibly suggested the attitude of Swin- 
burne's Althaea toward her. 

Fr. 530 Arcadian Atalanta Cypris-scorned 
With hounds and hunting gear. 

Swinburne calls her Arcadian Atalanta, snowy-souled, and gives 
a description of her hounds and equipment in the contest with 
the boar. From the same fragment we get a suggestion for these 
lines also: 

Ancaeus great of hand, an iron bulk. 
Two-edged for fight as the ax against his arm. 

cf. fr. 534 Ancaeus brandished ax with blade that bit 

Both ways. 
Fr. 531 An iron-weighted club he grasped in hand. 



12 THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

And to make use of the rest of the fragment he writes: 

Next by the left unsandaled foot know thou 
The sail and oar of this Aetolian land, 
Thy brethren, Toxeus, and the violent-souled 
Plexippus, ever swift with hand and tongue. 

Euripides says, 

Thestius' sons, 
Their left foot all unshod, but on the right 
The sandal, thus to leave them light of foot, 
A custom held of all Aetolian men. 

The nine lines in this fragment seem to form part of a catalogue 
of the hunt. Swinburne saw fit to incorporate them in his review. 
Althaea plays a role similar to that of Helen on the wall, but, 
reversing the situation, as is the habit with Swinburne's characters, 
she questions her son about the men gathering for the hunt. But 
see Macrobius, Sat. 5, 18, 17 Morem vero Aetolis fuisse uno 
tantum modo pede calceato in bellum ire ostendit clarissimus 
scriptor Euripides tragicus, in cuius tragoedia quae Meleager 
inscribitur nuntius inducitur describens quo quisque habitu 
fuerit ex ducibus qui ad aprum capiendum convenerant. Not 
finding enough in this hint to supply his gallery, Swinburne 
went to Aeschylus and borrowed Tydeus from the Septem to 
serve Althaea as a comparison for her son. 

Fr. 538 "Gods that face the sun" 

■'s similar to 

Those warder gods that face the sun. 

Of women Althaea says 

Praise be with men abroad; chaste lives with us, 
Home-keeping days and household reverence. 

So 

fr. 521 A woman to be good must stay at home. 
Once out of doors she is of little worth. 

This seems to be the idea in both Swinburne's play and that of 
Euripides; the following fragment adds weight: 

Fr. 522 If labor at the loom should fall to men. 

And women bear the brunt of wielding arms. 
Then from their skill of hand all fallen away 
They would be nothing worth nor more would we. 



THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 13 

Plexippus, taunting Meleager, says, 

Why, if she ride among us for a man, 

Sit thou for her and spin; a man grown girl 

Is worth a woman weaponed; sit thou here. 

and Atalanta, speaking of herself, says. 

Lest one revile me, a woman, yet no wife, 

That bear a spear for spindle and this bow strung 

For a web woven. 

Of death Meleager says to his father: 

Pray thou thy days be long before thy death, 
And full of ease and kingdom, seeing in death 
There is no comfort and none aftergrowth, 
Nor shall one thence look up and see day's dawn 
Nor light upon the land whither I go. 

So in fr. 533 we read 

This light is sweet; the darkness under earth 
Gives no delight for man to enter in 
Even in a dream; and I though grown so old 
Abominate it; never wish to die. 

Fr. 543 is just one word, "He offered up sacrifice," which finds its 
echo in "when the king did sacrifice," 

This seems on the whole quite a number of hints for a poet 
to take from the scanty fragments of one he held in such contempt. 

Fragments of Erechtheus. Of the fragments of the 
Erechtheus he made little use, but somewhat more than he claimed 
in the letter quoted by Gosse. An examination of the fragment 
referred to (Nauck 362) will show that he made use of more than 
a hint and one or two of the best lines. Moreover fragment 370 of 
the Erechtheus seems to find an echo in Atalanta, where Althaea 
tells her son of the glorious old age that comes to men who have 
done great deeds and thought high thoughts. This shows that 
Swinburne learned early the value of material found in the tragic 
fragments; he certainly made free use of whatever appealed to 
him in those of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, 

Sentimentality and Rhesis. In Swinburne, Euripidean sen- 
timentality often appears in the form of tender reminiscence. 
It is seldom indulged in when the person to whom it is directed is 
present, although that sometimes happens. Althaea makes most 



14 THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

use of it in Atalanta in Calydon and under most diverse conditions. 
She grows sentimental in the contemplation of her own unhappi- 
ness, of the dreams that haunt her, her absent kin, her dead 
mother Eurythemis, her own solitude when bereft of her brothers. 
Every note in the gamut of mother love is played upon. The 
first is struck in the long rhesis of the first episode, and the habit, 
established early, persists to the end. We learn all the details of 
Meleager's birth, his beauty, his audacity in trying to take hold 
of the distaff of the Fates, 

a tenderer thing 
Than any flower of fleshly seed alive. 

Then in sudden contrast with this, she pictures him as he appears 

for the hunt. 

So light a thing was this man grown so great 

Men cast their heads back, seeing against the sun 

Blaze the armed man carved on his shield, and hear 

The laughter of little bells along the brace 

Ring, as birds singing or flutes blown, and watch 

High up the cloven shadow of either plume 

Divide the tright light of the brass and make 

His helmet as a windy and wintering moon 

Seen through blown cloud and plume-like drift, when ships 

Drive, and men strive with all the sea, and oars 

Break, and the beaks dip under, drinking death; 

Yet was he then but a span long, and moaned 

With inarticulate mouth inseparate words, 

And with blind lips and fingers wrung my breast 

Hard, and thrust out with foolish hands and feet. 

Murmuring; (Cf. Aesch. Sept. 380-395.) 

This is a very good example of an Aeschylean reminiscence 
set in the Euripidean manner. 

Meleager is the true son of his mother in this respect; he 
indulges in fond recollections of little Helen and grave Clytem- 
nestra, like pasturing fawns that graze and fear some arrow. The 
former laughs and lightens with her eyes in the manner of the 
Aeschylean lion cub raised in the house to be the Ate of the 
inhabitants. He often grows sentimental in talking with his 
mother: 

For what thou art I know thee, and this thy breast 
And thy fair eyes I worship and am bound 
Toward thee in spirit and love thee in all my soul. 
For there is nothing terribler to men 
Than the sweet face of mothers and the might. 



THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 15 

Sometimes it leads him into a hymeneal figure, as when speaking 
of his Argonautic expedition he recalls the time when 

The first furrow in virginal green sea 

Followed the plunging plough share of hewn pine, 

a figure which he employs again when in the exodos he addresses 
his mother for the last time: 

Thou too, the bitter mother and mother-plague 
Of this my weary body, — thou too, queen, 
The source and end, the sower and the scythe, 
The rain that ripens and the drought that slays, 
The sand that swallows and the spring that feeds. 

To make me and unmake me, — thou, I say, 
Lucret. 4, 1272 Althaea, since my father's ploughshare, drawn 
Sept. 754 Through fatal seedland of a female field, 

Furrowed thy body, whence a wheaten ear 
Strong from the sun and fragrant from the rains 
I sprang and cleft the closure of thy womb, 
Mother, I d>'ing with unforgetful tongue 
Hail thee as holy and worship thee as just 
Who art unjust and unholy; and with my knees 
Would worship, but thy fire and subtlety, 
Dissundering them, devour me; 

The same figure of generation is developed with a rapturous 
delight in the fourth stasimon of Erechtheus, and also serves to 
show how Euripidean Swinburne can make an Aeschylean idea 
appear. (Cf. Aes. fr. Danaed. 44.) 

Even Atalanta becomes sentimental in the contemplation of 
her cold sacred life: 

I shall have no man's love, 

Forever, and no face of children bom 

Or feeding lips upon me or fastening eyes 

Forever, nor being dead shall kings my sons 

Mourn me and bury, and tears on daughters' cheeks 

Burn; but a cold and sacred life, but strange. 

But far from dances and the back-blowing torch, 

Far off from flowers or any bed of man 

Shall be my life forever; me the snows 

That face the first o' the morning, and cold hills 

Full of the land-wind and sea-traveling storms 

And many a wandering wing of noisy nights 

That know the thunder and hear the thickening wolves — 



16 THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

Me the utmost pine and footless frost of woods 
That talk with many winds and gods, the hours 
Rerisen and white divisions of the dawn, 
Springs thousand-tongued with the intermitting reed 
And streams that murmur of the mother snow — 
Me these allure and know me, but no man, 
Knows, and my goddess only. 

In the Erechtheus the sentimental touch is used just as freely; 
Erechtheus is sentimental in his attitude to Athens, to Praxithea, 
and to the battle; and Praxithea is just as sentimental in her 
attitude to her 'mother-land,' her husband, and her daughter. 

Sophistry. Althaea sounds the sophistic note in her very- 
first speech, where she challenges the attitude of the chorus. 
During the episode she expounds to them the envy of the gods, 
the curse of love, and the burden of life. She even cites the source 
of her wisdom: she had heard 

high sayings of one most wise, 
Eurythemis my mother, who beheld 
With eyes alive and spake with lips of these 
As one on earth disfleshed and disallied 
From breath or blood corruptible; such gifts 
Time gave her, and an equal soul to these 
And equal face to all things; thus she said. 

Although the chorus maintains through the first episode 
its own attitude to the gods, the effect of her speech is seen in the 
next song, in the very pessimistic attitude taken to man and his 
creation; and this attitude grows more and more sombre as the 
play progresses. Indeed the sophistication of the chorus, under 
Althaea's influence is one of the most interesting phenomena in 
the play. Toward the close of the play we find them speaking, 
like nurses trained in a maternity hospital, of gestation, birth, 
and the nurture of children. 

the son lies close about thine heart, 
Full of thy milk, warm from thy womb, and drains 
Life and the blood of life and all thy fruit. 
Eats thee and drinks thee as who breaks bread and eats, 
Treads wine and drinks, thyself a sect of thee; 
And if he feed not, shall not thy flesh faint? 
Or drink not, are not thy lips dead for thirst? 
This thing moves more than all things, even thy son, 



THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 17 

That thou cleave to him; and he shall honor thee, 
Thy womb that bare him and the breasts he knew, 
Reverencing most for thy sake all his gods. 

The king too assumes the air of wisdom although he is not 
given opportunity to make much use of it. Attracted by the 
argument of Althaea and her son, he enters with the remark: 

Lady, the daughter of Thestius, and thou, son. 

Not ignorant of your strife nor light of wit, 

Scared with vain dreams and fluttering like spent fire, 

I come to judge between you, but a king 

Full of past days and wise from years endured. 

The sophistry of Praxithea is perhaps as great as that of 
Althaea, but it lacks the parade, so is not so noticeable. 

Rhetoric. Rhetoric of the declamatory Euripidean sort is to 
be found in all the plays of Swinburne, from the earliest to the 
latest; it is not peculiar to the Greek plays, although in them 
it has no small place. We see everywhere the tendency of the 
author to lose control of the theme and lapse into a hysteria of 
sentimentality. It is not confined to one character, but is char- 
acteristic of all. Althaea is the greatest sinner, not because it is 
more characteristic of her, but because she has greater opportunity. 
Meleager, in his last speech, is superlatively rhetorical in the bad 
sense of the term; Atalanta, in her justification of her presence, is 
equally so; while Praxithea's first long speech to Chthonia is a 
fine example of a rhesis that is both sophistic and rhetorical, and 
steeped in sentimentality. 

Eros Tyrannus. Althaea states her conception of love in 
the first episode, and throughout the play she develops the theme 
with many modulations. 

but I know 
Foolish and wise men must be to the end. 
And feed myself with patience; but this most, 
This moves me, that for wise men as for fools 
Love is one thing, an evil thing, and turns 
Choice words and wisdom into fire and air. 
And in the end shall no joy come, but grief. 
Sharp words and soul's division and fresh tears 
Flower wise upon the old root of tears brought forth, 
Fruit-wise upon the old flower of tears sprung up, 
Pitiful sighs and much regrafted pain. 



18 THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

The second stasimon, that precedes the meeting of Meleager 
and Atalanta, treats it from every possible phase. For Euripidean 
reminiscences see Hipp. 527 &., 764; 13; Troades, 511-70, 799-860, 
1060-1120, 1272 ff.; Helen, 1300 ff. Althaea 
The Supreme Evil decries love as a personal evil, while the chorus 
treats it as an evil that brings about the 
destruction of cities and the overthrow of nations. 

We Are Against Thee, O God Most High! Atalanta, 
giving stern warning to those who oppose her participation in 
the hunt, appeals to the supreme god to judge between them. 

for now, 
If there be any highest in heaven, a god 
Above all thrones and thunders of the gods 
Throned, and the wheels of the world roll under him, 
Judge he between me and all of you and see 
If I transgress at all; but ye, refrain 
Transgressing hands and reinless mouths, and keep 
Silence, lest by much foam of violent words 
And proper poison of your lips ye die. 

This motivates not only the chorus that follows but the remainder 
of the play. The double figure used by Swinburne has two aspects ; 
one, looking to the hunt with its deeds of prowess, and the other, 
psychological, showing the sinister working of fate within the 
minds of all who tread the wretched stage, and man's uncon- 
sciousness of the power that waits to hurl him to ruin. Taking 
up the theme of the Infatuate Word, the chorus proceeds to lash 
itself into a very ecstasy of fury that leads straight to the shambles 
of Ate. Woodberry thinks that 'the thought is arrived at through 
the spectacle of the sufiFering of the human race, and applies, as it 
were, to the Zeus of Prometheus.' But the attitude of Prometheus, 
the god, to his brother god is mild when compared to that of man 
to his sardonic creator, whom he pleases to characterize as The 
Supreme Evil. Prometheus calls nature to witness his woes; 
man taunts god himself for the ills that fall to mortal lot. Pro- 
metheus sees the end of his suffering; and man knows that 

A little fruit a little while is ours, 
And the worm finds it soon, 

and then comes death and much forgetfulness of things. 



THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 19 

Man takes delight in reviling god for his treatment of the 
thing "fashioned with loathing and love," a thing that is clothed 
with derision, whose life is a watch between a sleep and a sleep. 
In spite of the Aeschylean motivation, that suffering will follow 
transgressing hands and reinless mouths, the whole outlook of 
the chorus is Euripidean. 

Thou hast laid 
Upon us with thy left hand life, and said 
Live: and again thou hast said, Yield up thy breath, 
And with thy right hand laid upon us death. (Cf. Eur. Med. 1109) 

Helen blames god for her woes (Troad. 1042ff.). Apollo is the 
destroyer, as his name declares; Fr, 781 O fair shining Helios, how 
hast thou destroyed him and me also; rightly among mortals art 
thou called Apollo. Fr. 273, "For all men, and not for us alone, 
the god at one time or another has ruined life." For various 
forms of the same idea see Hecuba, 197, 721; Phoen. 1030; Iph. 
Aul. 41 1 ; Upon high and low alike falls their ill-will. Cf . Helen, 
1213; Orestes, 954, Iph. Aul. 536. In brief the whole outlook upon 
life is Euripidean; death is promised us, but not before sorrows 
and tears and woes and mishaps and old age. We all carry our 
burdens, beneath which each one is crushed. (Alcestis 893.) See 
Alcestis 20, Hipp. 981, Ion 381 fif., Troad, 1203. 

Swinburne looks forward to death with a sort of eagerness, 
while Euripides is fond of contemplating the many misfortunes 
that anticipate it. Cf. fr. 264, 540, 558. 

Swinburne's burden of age is also Euripidean: 

Yea, and with weariness of lips and eyes, 

With breaking of the bosom and with sighs, 

We labor, and are clad and fed with grief 

And filled with days we would not fain behold 

And nights we would not hear of; we wax old, 

All we wax old and wither like a leaf. 

We are outcast, strayed between bright sun and moon; 

Our light and darkness are as leaves of flowers, 

Black flowers and white, that perish; and the moon 

As midnight, and the night as daylight hours. 

The chorus of the Heracles gives the Euripidean attitude to this 
condition of life. Her. 107 fif. Cf. P. Masqueray, Euripide et ses 
Idees, p. 272. 



20 THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

What disposition we are to make of the tears shed on our 
journey to this bourne, we do not learn from either poet, although 
Swinburne does make some interesting suggestions. 

What shall be done with all these tears of ours? 
Shall they make watersprings in the fair heaven 
To bathe the brows of morning? or like flowers 
Be shed and shine before the starriest hours, 
Or make the raiment of the weeping seven? 
Or rather, O our masters, shall they be 
Food for the famine of the grievous sea, 
A great well-head of lamentation 
Satiating the sad gods? or fall and flow 
Among the years and seasons to and fro 
And wash their feet with tribulation 
And fill them full with grieving ere they go. 

Throughout Euripides they trickle just as freely and at times 
with as much ostentation. 

8aKpva T^'tK baKpixjiv KaraXellSeTaL 
oHxeTepoLdL Bo/jlols' 

Swinburne's high gods mix our drink with the bubbling 
bitterness of life and death and hold it to our lips and laugh; but 
they taste not, lest they too change and sleep. They mix it, 
not for the man who has sinned, as in Aeschylus, nor for the man 
marked for d^estruction, as in Sophocles, but for the whole human 
race. Swinburne takes the Euripidean outlook; god confounds 
everything. 

But up in he;aven the high gods one by one 

Lay hands upon the draught that quickeneth. 

Fulfilled with all tears shed and all things done, 

And stir with soft imperishable breath 

The bubbling bitterness of life and death 

And hold it to our lips and laugh; but they 

Preserve their lips from tasting night or day. 

Lest they too change and sleep, the fates that spun, 

The lips that made us and the hands that slay; 

Lest all these change and heaven bow down to none, 

Change and be subject to the secular sway 

And terrene revolution of the sun. 

Therefore they thrust it from them, putting time away. 



THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 21 

Euripides cites an instance and adds his comment; Hec. 952 ff. 
In Orestes the chorus cries "Alas for the deeds of the malice of 
heaven," and in the Ion Creusa laments the 'wrongful-reckless 
deeds of gods! For justice where shall we make suit if it is our 
Lords' injustice that crushes us. The wish to reduce the gods 
to man's wretchedness has a ring of Homeric naivete, but we 
get a hint of it in Hipp. 1415, where in reply to his father's admis- 
sion that the gods have caused his wits to stumble, Hippolytus 
cries : 

O that men's curses could but strike the gods. 
(See also Bacchae, 1347.) 



22 THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

MIXED INFLUENCE 

Characterization 

Double Characteristics. The characters of Swinburne's 
Greek plays are peculiar in this respect; in action and in the 
contemplation of action they are Aeschylean, while in retro- 
spection and in sentiment they are strongly Euripidean. This 
is particularly true of Althaea, his greatest Greek creation. 

Althaea. No character could be more Aeschylean than 
Althaea when she uses her intelligence to direct some determina- 
tion of will. She looks forward with a clearness of vision and a 
certainty of purpose that make her a rival of the great Clytem- 
nestra. She is surely "One of those Aeschylean women, a mon- 
strous goddess, who had in her tragic and Titanic passion" to 
the highest degree. She looks backward, however, with Euripi- 
dean tenderness of thought that too often degenerates into 
Euripidean sentimentality. 

The Theme of the Brand. In one Aeschylean aspect we 
meet her on the title page, where we see 

What the child-destroying cruel Thestius' child, 

Fire-taught and fire-incited, brought about. 

Rekindling to a purple glow the brand 

Coeval with her own child's natal cry; 

Matched with his span of life the three fates spanned 

When they wrought out his destiny hard by. (Coeph 602 ff.) 

This fire-motif lights the steps of Althaea from the prologue to 
the exodos. Her very sleep is turned into a fire and her dreams 
to stuff that kindles it. She sees that Artemis, in sending Atalanta 
to join the hunt, 'hath lit Fire where the old fire went out;' and 
she complains that the Fates 

Shed fire across my eyelids mixed with night 

And bum me blind and disilluminate 

My sense of seeing, and my perspicuous soul 

Darken with vision; seeing, I see not, hear 

And hearing am not holpen, but mine eyes 

Stain many tender broideries in the bed — 
and my brows and lips 

Tremble and sob in sleeping like swift flames 

That tremble, or water when it sobs with heat 

Kindled from under. 



THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 23 

This is. anxiety such as Clytemnestra feigned to have felt for 
her husband when he was beset by the dangers around Troy. 
(Cf. Agam. 889 ff.) But in Althaea there is no hypocrisy, her 
motive is as perspicuous as her soul, and her vision as clear as 
Cassandra's. 

, Before the birth of Meleager she dreamed that she bore a fire- 
brand. When at his birth one of the fates gave him life till 
"the brand upon the hearth burn down," from the bed she 

Sprang, and drew forth the brand and cast on it 
Water, and trod the flame barefoot, and crushed 
With naked hand spark beaten out of spark 
And blew against and quenched it; 

Later she dreamed again that the brand burst on fire and faded, 
and Death came and with dry lips blew the charred ash into her 
breast, while Love crushed the ember beneath his feet. In speak- 
ing against the love of Meleager for Atalanta, she reminds him 
that with time blind love burns out; and from love's light and 
fiery dreams spring heavy sorrows. In her fear of the fate of 
her son her heart takes fire and trembles flamewise and tears 
burn her eyes fierce as fire. She sees Meleager's head glitter 
and his hand burn its way through the furrow of sundering spears. 
She calls attention to the bitter and rooted love that burns between 
them. The very sunlight is 'the frequent flame of day.' It is, of 
course, natural to call for burnt-offering when she learns of the 
death of the boar; but immediately after the sacrifice, when she is 
informed by the messenger that Meleager has slain her brothers, 
she cries: 

Wast thou born fire, and shalt thou not devour? 
The chorus takes up the theme : 

The fire thou madest, will it consume even thee? 

and she answers: 

My dreams are fallen upon me; burn thou too. 

She imagines her sister Leda cursing her and saying: 

A sorrow and not a son, 
Sister, thou barest, even a burning fire, 
A brand consuming thine own soul and me 



24 THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

But ye now, sons of Thestius, make good cheer, 
For ye shall have such wood to funeral fire 
As no king hath; and flame that once burnt down 
Oil shall not quicken or breath relume or wine 
Refresh again; 

Had her brothers died a natural death she might have 

Strewn with flowers their fire and on their tomb 
Hung crowns and over them a song, and seen 
Their praise outflame their ashes; 

Thereupon she resolves that they shall have honor 

and such funereal flame 
As strews men's ashes in their enemies' face 
And blinds their ej^es who hate them; 

Determined to avenge her brothers, she vows that her eyes 

shall see never nor touch anything 
Save blood unstaunched and fire unquenchable. 

The naivete of the following question of the chorus suggests the 
question that the Agamemnon chorus puts to Cassandra; and the 
vision of Althaea is strongly reminiscent of the vision of Cassandra. 
(Agam. 1215 ff.) 



What wilt thou do? what ails thee? for the house 
Shakes ruinously; wilt thou bring fire for it? 



She replies 



Fire in the roofs and on the lintels fire. 

Lo ye, who stand and weave, between the doors. 

There; and blood drips from hand and thread and stains 

Threshold and raiment and me passing in 

Flecked with the sudden sanguine drops of death. 

And later she cries, 

I am fire and burn myself; keep clear of fire. 

After she has kindled the brand, she burns with it; 

lo, the fire I lit, 
I bum with fire to quench it; yea, with flame 
I bum up even the dust and ash thereof. 



THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 25 

The stichomachy that follows reads almost like a conflagration. 

Ch. Woman, what fire is this thou burnest with? 

Al. Yea, to the bone, yea, to the blood and all. 

Ch. For this thy face and hair are as one fire. 

Al. A tongue that licks and beats upon the dust. 

Ch. And in thine eyes are hollow light and heat. 

Al. Of flame not fed with hand or frankincense. 

Ch. I see a faint fire lightening from the hall. 

Al, Gaze, stretch your eyes, strain till the lids drop off. 

Ch. Flushed pillars down the flickering vestibule. 

And a long brand that blackens; and white dust." 

She announces the death of Meleager just as Clytemnestra 
announces the death of Agamemnon: 

That is my son, my flesh, my fruit of life, 

My travail and the year's weight of my womb, 

Meleager, a fire enkindled of mine hands, 

And of mine hands extinguished; this is he. (Cf. Agam. 1404.) 

avTOS kaTLV ' Ay aiJ.efivo:v kfxos 
Tr6(TLS, vtKpos 5e, TTjaSe St^tas x^pos 
epyov, diKaias reKTOVos. rdS' u5' exei. 

She prays death to spare her until she sees the brand burn down 
and die. She even experiences a physical sensation of burning. 

I feel the fire upon my face 
And on my cheek the burning of a brand. 
Yea, the smoke bites me, yea, I drink the steam 
With nostril and with eyelid and with lip 
Insatiate and intolerant; and mine hands 
Burn, and the fire feeds upon mine eyes; I reel 
As one made drunk with living, whence he draws 
Drunken delight; yet I, though mad for joy, 
Loathe my long living and am waxen red 
As with the shadow of shed blood; behold, 
I am kindled with the flames that fade in him, 
I am swollen with subsiding of his veins, 
I am flooded with his ebbing; my lit eyes 
Flame with the falling fire that leaves his lids 
Bloodless; my cheek is luminous with blood 
Because his face is ashes; 



26 THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

In the kommos the semichorus takes up the cry: 

He wastes as the embers quicken, 
With the brand he fades as a brand. 

and with nice balance of phrase the chorus sings to Meleager: 

Thou madest thy sword as a fire, 
With fire for a sword thou art slain. 

It soon becomes a part of Meleager's cry: 

The flesh of my body is molten, the limbs of it molten like lead. 

and 

My heart is within me 
As an ash in the fire. 

Between his mother and Atalanta he draws a sharp contrast: 

Though thou art as fire 
Fed with fuel in vain, 
My delight, my desire 
Is more chaste than the rain, 
More pure than the dewfall, more holy than stars are 
that live without stain. 

And again addressing the chorus: 

Will ye crown me my tomb 
Or exalt me my name. 
Now my spirits consume. 
Now my flesh is a flame? 

who answer: 

Turn back now, turn thee, 
As who turns to wake; 
Though the life in thee burn thee, 
Couldst thou bathe it and slake 
Where the sea-ridge of Helle hangs heavier, and east upon 
west waters break? 

In his last speech, while addressing his mother he says: 

and with my knees 
Would worship, but thy fire and subtlety, 
Dissundering them, devour me; for these limbs 
Are as light dust and crumblings from mine urn 



THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 27 

Before the fire has touched them; and mj' face 
As a dead leaf or dead foot's mark on snow 

for all my veins 

Fail me, and all mine ashen life burns down. 

I would thou hadst let me live; but gods averse, 

But fortune, and the fiery feet of change 

And time, these would not, these tread out my life, 

These, and not thou: 

Althaea under the Spell of Ate. From this we see at 
once that Althaea is an abnormal character, that at the very 
beginning of the play she is under the spell of Ate, already made 
infatuate by the powers that control her destiny. She hates 
Artemis just as Prometheus hates Zeus, and for a reason somewhat 
similar. Artemis has long afflicted her land, and has now thrown 
temptation in the way of her son. So she felt the power of doom 
just as truly as Cassandra felt it at the palace of Agamemnon; and 
although her vision was not so clear, her premonition led her to 
the truth. 

Attitude toward the Gods. Her faith in the existence of 
the Gods is Aeschylean, and, although she does not display the 
conventional Greek fear of them, she is conventionally reverent; 
she praises them when she perceives that she has experienced good 
at their hands. But on such occasions the audience is made 
aware that the situation is one of dramatic irony, which makes 
it all the more Aeschylean. 

Attitude to Son. In her treatment of her son she is, like 
Clytemnestra, "the impersonation of tyrannic self-will, wronged 
and angered and turned to vengeance. She was the keeper 
of her son's life; she had been insolent enough to extinguish the 
brand in the very presence of the fate who had promised him life 
until the brand was consumed. For this presumption she seems 
to have begun early to show signs of suffering from a mind diseased. 
Justly proud of her son, she could not but feel indignation at his 
attitude to Atalanta; it meant ruin from the start. And, although 
she knew that her brothers and her son were none too friendly, 
she was utterly overwhelmed at the unnatural crime of kindred 
slaughter. Her heart was hardened like Clytemnestra's from 
brooding over the fate of her daughter. Althaea promised her 
brethren a funeral pyre such as had burnt for none other; she was 
resolved that they should not go down to Hades unattended. She 



28 THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

exults in her deed just as Clytemnestra exults to the chorus of 
Agamemnon, and both make the same justification. 
Althaea says 

and these my son 

Not reverencing his gods nor mine own heart 

Nor the old sweet years for old venerable things, 

But cruel and in his raving like a beast, 

Hath taken away to slay them. 

In the same manner Clytemnestra justifies herself: 

He (Agamemnon) caring no more for her death than for the death of a beast of the 
field, though he had sheep in abundance in his fleecy flocks, sacrificed his own 
child to charm away the Thracian winds. Agam. 1415 ff. 

Althaea feared that her mother Eurythemis might grieve, 
hearing how her sons came down to her in the dark, 

Unburied, unavenged, as kinless men 
And had a queen their sister. 

It is with somewhat of a spirit of family pride that she justifies her 
deed. The bitter irony of Clytemnestra is far more terrible. 

The victim has no need of the wailings of the people of the house; but Iphigenia, 
his child, lovingly, as is meet, shall welcome her father at the ford of the swift- 
flowing Acheron, and put her arms about him and kiss him. (Ag. 1555 5.) 

Althaea and Atalanta. Althaea's hatred of Atalanta is 
more genuine than Clytemnestra's for Cassandra, and is due, 
partly to the jealousy of a mother who has always dominated the 
heart of her son, and partly to her terror of the strange woman, 
so different from herself and the woman she would choose for her 
son's bride. This is apparent in spite of her stern tone in the 
sermon on the law. Clytemnestra's feeling is more of contempt or 
disgust; she has no fear of a slave brought home from a conquered 
city. She sneers at the corpse of her husband as the darling of 
many a Chryseis. The swan-song of one of these is as a relish 
to her own love. To both herself and Agamemnon such things 
had long ago become ota irep w/zi^erats. 

Atalanta was a woman armed, the wholly unusual. 

A woman armed makes war upon herself, 
Unwomanlike, and treads down use and wont 
And the sweet common honor that she hath. 
Love, and the cry of children, and the hand 



THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 29 

Trothplight and mutual mouth of marriages. 
This doth she being unloved; whom if one love, 
Not fire nor iron and the wide-mouthed wars 
Are deadlier than her lips or braiden hair. 
For of the one comes poison, and a curse 
Falls from the other and burns the lives of men. 

Althaea and Oeneus. Oeneus enters at the close of Melea- 
ger's reply to his mother's sermon on the Law, and attempts 
to assume a dignity and port in keeping with his political rank 
and his hypothetical importance in his household. His air is 
that of a judge come to decide between mother and son; he implies 
that one is light of wit, and the other is "scared with vain dreams 
and fluttering like spent fire." One he reproves for being fain 
to undo things done; the other for being swift to esteem them 
overmuch. His own assurance rests on the fact that he is 

a king 
Full of past days, and wise from years endured. 

He feels kindly towards Atalanta because of her beauty and her 
modesty; and he philosophizes on the changes wrought by time 
that now brings ' 

Among men armed a woman, foreign born, 
A virgin, not like the natural flower of things 
Unloveable, no light for a husband's house, 
Espoused; a glory among unwedded girls. 
And chosen of gods who reverence maidenhood. 

Still he is willing to accept whatever help such a maiden may 
contribute to the slaying of the boar. He honors her, and in doing 
so honors the gods whom she follows. But as for his son the 
obligation is clear; 

but thou 
Abstain thy feet from following and thine eyes 
From amorous touch, nor set towards hers thine heart. 
Son, lest hate bear no deadlier fruit than love. 

Thereupon Althaea addresses Oeneus for the first and last 
time in the play, and in a manner that bespeaks a tolerant con- 
tempt. She is weary of wise words. "O king, thou art wise, 
but wisdom halts;" One might imagine Clytemnestra dismissing 
Agamemnon in just this manner, had she not decided to slay him» 



30 THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

EuRiPiDEAN Influence. The Gods. Althaea accepts the 
gods with Aeschylean faith and curses them with Euripidean 
audacity. She was herself sprung from the gods; their blood 
was in her veins, their passions in her heart. Even her judgment 
is not that of a mortal, but rather of a temper of the race divine. 
Her knowledge of their will and temper enables her to assume 
towards them a very definite attitude, which she maintains to 
the end of the play. She suffers from no illusions, for she is well 
aware of the hopelessness of human destiny; she is not deceived 
by the solicitude of the fates in the welfare of her new-born babe, 
knowing that 'they mock us with a little piteousness, and spare 
us but to smite.' She speaks at times more as the equal of the 
gods than as a mortal; she is often wanting in reverence, while on 
occasion she is really impious. Her irreverence is due, in part, 
to her resentment at the unkind treatment experienced at the 
hands of Artemis; but it arises, in greater measure, from a deep- 
seated bitterness against the gods, — from her certain knowledge 
that they use their power to the hurt of mortals, whenever the 
inclination comes upon them. Man's sad plight is deep-set in 
her mind; she regards him with a sort of Promethean pity, although 
this pity is not ennobled by any yearning to do him service. 
She is too well aware of the hopelessness of such an idea. Sharp 
upon the last note of the chorus strikes the discord of her question: 

What are ye singing, what is this ye sing? 

The maidens reply that they are bringing flowers and song and 
raiment to propitiate the goddess. To this her reply is a theme 
that she amplifies and modulates and develops with variation 
upon variation; but in the end it is substantially the same. 

Night, a black hound, follows the white fawn day, 
Swifter than dreams the white flown feet of sleep; 
Will ye pray back the night with any prayers? 
And though the spring put back a little while 
Winter, and snows that plague all men for sin, 
And the iron time of cursing, yet I know 
Spring shall be ruined with the rain, and storm 
Eat up like fire the ashen autumn days. 

The chorus suggests that "One doth well, being patient of the 
gods," (cf. Eurip. Hel. 252) at which Althaea demurs; 'their 



THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 31 

healing herbs infect our blood, they give us poisonous drink for 
wine and gall for milk and cursing for a prayer. 

There is nothing stabile in the world 
But the gods break it. 

Smitten in the death of her brothers and realizing that she 
is now in the presence of her old nameless dread, she cries: 
Our time is come upon us, it is here. 
The gods are many about me, I am one, 
They rend me, they divide me, they destroy. 
They are strong, they are strong, I am broken and 

they prevail 

She accuses the gods of wanton malevolence, 

We all our days 

Sin and have hunger and die infatuated. 
For madness have ye given us and not health, 
And sins whereof we know not; and for these 
Death and sudden destruction unawares. 

As her grief grows more intense her audacity incites her to claim 
a place with them, just as wanton, just as inconsistent: 

My breath drawn 
Shames me and monstrous things and violent gods. 
What strange things eaten or drunken, O great gods, 
Make me as you, or as the beasts that feed. 
Slay and divide and cherish their own hearts? 

Then she reaches the culmination of audacity in 

ye strong gods, 
Give place unto me; I am as one of you 
To give life and to take life. 

After she has kindled the brand she laughs, 'as the gods laugh at 
us'; she has no prayer to offer. 

I that did this will weep not nor cry out, 
Cry ye and weep; I will not call on gods. 
Call ye on them. 

She has maintained to the bitter end the attitude of self-sufficiency 
that she took at the close of the first episode: 

Whatever intolerable or glad 
The swift hours weave or unweave, I go hence 
Full of mine own soul, perfect of myself. 
Toward mine and me sufficient. 



32 THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

This bitterness against the gods is perhaps temperamental 
in part, — they have infected her blood, — but it is in great measure 
due to her Euripidean contemplation of the phenomena of life. 
She certainly has a definite complaint against Artemis, in the 
utterance of which she throws discretion to the winds. 

First Artemis for all this harried land 

I praise not, and for wasting of the boar 

That mars with tooth and tusk and fiery feet 

Green pasturage and the grace of standing corn, 

And meadow and marsh with springs and unblown leaves, 

Flocks and swift herds and all that bite sweet grass, 

I praise her not; what things are these to praise? 

Both the speaker of the prologue and the chorus justify the 
sending of the boar. The former, in his invocation to Artemis, 
acknowledges that it was 

Sent in thine anger against us for sin done, 
And bloodless altars without wine or fire. 

The chorus gives a more definite explanation: 

But when the king did sacrifice and gave 
Each god fair dues of wheat and blood and wine. 
Her not with bloodshed and burnt-offering 
Revered he, nor with salt and cloven cake; 
Wherefore, being wroth, she plagued the land. 

Unconvinced by this explanation, or at least ignoring it, 
Althaea at once makes a second complaint. She has learned of 
the coming of 'Arcadian Atalanta, snowy-souled,' and in this 
sees again the malevolence of Artemis. 

Yea, but a curse she hath sent above all this 
To hurt us where she healed us, and hath lit 
Fire where the old fire went out, 

Love is coming, "a thwart sea-wind full of rain and foam." From 
it there is no escape; its universality strikes her at the heart. 

But this most. 
This moves me, that for wise men as for fools, 
Love is one thing, an evil thing, and turns 
Choice words and wisdom into fire and air. 

Cf. Euripides, Medea, 330, 

Alas, to mortals what a curse is love. 



THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 33 

But against the irresistible she will do what she can; she will go 
arm her son, 'lest love or some man's anger work him harm.' 

Ceremonial. In matters of ceremony Althaea displayed 
the conventional reverence for the gods, and expressed her obliga- 
tion for their kindness. Her first cry, when she learns of the 
death of the boar, is 

some bring flowers and crown 
These gods and all the lintel and shed wine, 
Fetch sacrifice and slay, for heaven is good. 

With a sense of well-being she can feel kindly toward them, 
although she has just expressed strong disapproval of Artemis 
for harrying the land. After the narrative of the herald, wherein 
Meleager appears in such a heroic role, she cries again. 

Laud ye the gods, for this they have given is good. 

She adds, however, with Euripidean misgiving, 

And what shall be, they hide until their time. 

Some have perished in the hunt, but that was to be expected. 

But let all sad things be. 
Till all have made before the prosperous gods 
Burnt offering, aJid pour out the floral wine. 
Look fair, O gods, and favorable, for we 
Praise you with no false heart and flattering mouth 
Being merciful, but with pure souls and prajer. 

This, of course, is merely ritualistic; under the circumstances 
it is what is expected of her. The herald, however, is properly 
impressed, for he replies: 

Thou hast prayed well; for whoso fears not these, 
But once being prosperous, waxes huge of heart. 
Him shall some new thing unaware destroy, 

a characteristic Aeschylean idea stated with Aeschylean irony. 

POTHOS. Althaea is distinctly Euripidean in her ability to 
change suddenly from a stern fierce mood to one of yearning and 
tender reminiscence. This is revealed in her attitude to her son, 
her brothers, her absent relatives and her dead mother. In the 
rhesis of the first episode, after her condemnation of love and her 
arraignment of the gods, she becomes reminiscent of her new-born 
babe and the presence of the Fates at his birth. 



34 THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

For I said, 
These are the most high Fates that dwell with us, 
And we find favor a little in their sight, 
A little, and more we miss of, and much time 
Foils us; howbeit they have pitied me, O son, 
And thee most piteous, thee a tenderer thing 
Than any flower of fleshly seed alive. 
Wherefore I kissed and hid him with my hands, 
And covered under arms and hair and wept, 
And feared to touch him with my tears and laughed; 

In her pride of her son's prowess she sees him 

Always also a flower of three suns old, 
The small one thing that lying drew down my life 
To lie with thee and feed thee; a child and weak, 
Mine, a delight to no man, sweet to me. 

After she has kindled the brand, her mind reverts once more 
to the childhood of her son: 

Yet O child. 
Son, first-born, fairest — O sweet mouth, sweet eyes. 
That drew my life out through my suckling breast. 
That shone and clove my heart through— O soft knees 
Clinging, O tender treadings of soft feet, 
Cheeks warm with little kissings, O child, child, 
What have we made each other? Lo, I felt 
Thy weight cleave to me, a burden of beauty, O son. 
Thy cradled brows and loveliest loving lips. 
The floral hair, the little lightening eyes. 
And all thy goodly glory; with mine hands 
Delicately I fed thee, with my tongue 
Tenderly spake, saying. Verily in god's time, 
For all the little likeness of thy limbs. 
Son, I shall make thee a kingly man to fight, 
A lordly leader; and hear before I die, , 

She bore the goodliest sword of all the world. 

After comparing him with the great Tydeus (Aesch. Sept. 380- 
395), she reverts to his infancy: 

Yet was he then but a span long, and moaned 
With inarticulate mouth inseparate words, 
And with blind lips and fingers wrung my breast 
Hard, and thrust out with foolish hands and feet, 
Murmuring. 



THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 35 

and later, 

But fair for me thou wert, O little life, 

Fruitless, the fruit of mine own flesh, and blind, 

More than much gold, ungrown, a foolish flower. t 

For silver nor bright snow nor feather of foam 

Was whiter, and no gold was yellower than thine hair, 

O child, my child. 

In her terrible anguish of soul, when contemplating her 
brothers' fate, her mind reverts again to the days of their child- 
hood, when they sported with her and made her familiar with 
armor and hounds and hunting spears. And between them comes 

the love of my born son, 
A new-made mother's new-born love, that grows 
From the soft child to the strong man, now soft, 
Now strong as either, and still one sole same love, 
Strives with me, no light thing to strive withal. 

Such passages are numerous in Euripides. (Cf. Tro. 740 ff.) 

O darling child, O prized above all price. 

Thou must leave thy poor mother, die by foes. * * * 

Child, dost thou weep, dost comprehend thy doom? 

Why with thy hands clutch, clinging to my robe. 

Like fledgling fleeing to nestle 'neath my wings? * * * 

O tender nursling, sweet to mother, sweet! ' 

O balmy breath ! in vain and all in vain 

This breast in swaddling-band has nurtured thee. 

Vainly I travailed and was spent with toils! 

Now, and no more forever, kiss thy mother. 

Fling thee on her that bare thee, twine thine arms 

Around my waist and la}' thy lips to mine. 

Hecuba laments that the child had not died in battle. Althaea 
makes the same lament for her brothers, and Oeneus for Meleager. 
(Eurip. Tro. 1167 ff.) 

Ah, darling, what ill death has come on thee! 

Hadst thou for Troy been slain, when thou hadst known 

Youth, wedlock's bliss, and godlike sovereignty. 

Blest wert thou — if herein may aught be blest; 

But now, once seen and sipped by thy child-soul. 

Thine home-bliss fleets forgotten, unenjoyed. 

Poor child, how sadly thine ancestral halls 

Upreared by Loxias, from thine head have shorn 

The curls that oft thy mother softly smoothed 



36 THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

And kissed, wherefrom through shattered bones forth grins 
Murder — a ghastliness I cannot speak. 

Medea, about to slay her children, speaks in a similar strain: 

Give, O babes, 
Give to your mother the right hand to kiss. 
O dearest hand, O lips most dear to me, 
O form and noble features of my children, 
Blessing be on you, there! for all things here 
Your sire hath stolen. Sweet, O sweet embrace, 
O children's roseleaf skin, O balmy breath, 
Away, away; strength faileth me to gaze 
On you, but I am overcome of evil. 

It would be easy to multiply examples; these are sufficient to 
show the mental attitude of the two poets. For an Aeschylean 
example see Choephoroe, 755 ff. 

Althaea the Preacher. Althaea was so sure of her sophistry 
that she treated as her mental inferiors all who came in contact 
with her. Her thought dominated the play from the time she 
appeared in the first episode until, towards the close of the exodos, 
she vowed never to open her lips again. The woman who could 
be so tender in thoughts of her son and brothers and absent 
relatives was always severe in conversation with them, giving them 
advice that closed with a gnomic utterance which veiled a threat, 
and at times addressing them in the language of a veritable 
martinet. Sometimes for their enlightenment she made use of 
the long rhesis developed in rhetorical style. We sometimes 
find a theme, with elaboration, illustration, application, and 
conclusion with threat openly expressed or concealed. The first 
of these occurs at the close of the first episode and is directed at 
the chorus, although it applies to her son. Its theme is Love 
the Tyrant. (Cf. Eur. Hip. 536 ff.) Her second is addressed to 
her son and is based on the same theme, although for an intro- 
duction she discourses on The Law, and incidentally uses reminis- 
cences from Aeschylus and Sophocles, finally arriving at her point 
of attack, a woman armed. Of her beware; 'her lips are deadlier 
than fire or iron or the wide-mouthed wars.' The theme of the 
third is Piety, the majesty of kindred blood {Ala avvai^iov) and is 
addressed to the chorus, but serves in effect as the funeral oration 
over her slain brothers. 



THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 37 

Attitude toward Atalanta. Although Althaea regarded 
Atalanta with jealousy and hate, she nevertheless gave indication 
of a certain amount of fear. She recognized her significance from 
the very beginning. She saw in her the curse sent by Artemis 
for the overthrow of Meleager, — a curse that was just as effective 
as Phaedra for the ruin of Hippolytus. Although she is violent 
in her denunciation, her tongue is curbed to a degree by the very 
reverent attitude taken by the chorus, the king, and by Meleager. 
Her brothers are of her opinion, but all three are cowed by the 
close of Atalanta's speech in justification of her joining the hunt. 
The speaker of the prologue refers to her as 
The maiden rose of all thy maids, 

Arcadian Atalanta, snowy-souled, 

Fair as the snow and footed as the wind. 

To the chorus 

She is holier than all holy days or things, 

The sprinkled water or fume of perfect fire; 

Chaste, dedicated to pure prayers and filled 

With higher thoughts than heaven; a maiden clean. 

Pure iron, fashioned for a sword, and man 

She loves not; what should one such do with love? 

To the king she is 

a glory among un wedded girls, 
And chosen of gods who reverence maidenhood. 

To Meleager she is 

Most fair and fearful, feminine, a god, 
Faultless; whom I that love not, being unlike. 
Fear and give honor and choose from all the gods. 

While to Althaea she is 

the strange woman, she, the flower, the sword, 
Red from spilt blood, a mortal flower to men. 
Adorable, detestable. 

So it seems that Swinburne, consciously or unconsciously, 
has made Atalanta the hypostasis of Artemis. She is certainly 
more than a mortal maid who haunted the wilds and followed 
the lead of the Daughter of Leto. Her divinity is recognized by 
the chorus, by Meleager, by Oeneus, the chief huntsman, by all 
save the brothers of Althaea, who paid the price of their irrever- 
ence; even by Althaea herself, who saw in her the power come to 



38 THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

break her life. It was she who filled Althaea's mind with the fire 
that kindled the fatal brand; who caused her to rail one moment at 
Love, the evil thing, and the next to weep over fond memories of 
her child. And Althaea, in lamenting the death of her brothers, 
is correct in her surmise of the cause, She has divined the real 
intention of the Fates; the instrument chosen to realize that 
intention was Atalanta. Her appearance and her psychological 
efifect suggested divinity as the Greeks realized it. Meleager was 
too deeply impressed with her sanctity to give any hint of the love 
that had overcome him. In just such a manner Hippolytus 
chose to follow Artemis, scorning the cult of Aphrodite. Both 
wished to be 'linked with companionship too high for man,' and 
both fell before the "blast of the envy of god." It is not sur- 
prising, therefore, that Althaea did what she could to rescue her 
son from the curse that was about to fall upon him, and from 
which she felt in her inmost heart that there was no escape. Her 
struggle against Love is but the prelude of that greater struggle, 
so like Medea's, against the doing of a deed that Fate refuses to 
leave undone. 

Meleager. Meleager is Hippolytus writ large. He displays 
all the virtues of the pure-hearted hunter of Euripides without 
any of his pettiness. He is, of course, a much greater man, a 
winner of battles at home and abroad; but he meets the same 
sinister fate in the hour of his triumph at the hands of inscrutable 
powers and for reasons hard to explain. Throughout the play he 
is the blameless knight, patient alike under the sermons of his 
mother, the vindictiveness of his uncles, the condescension of his 
father, and the disregard of Atalanta. Against the latter he is 
warned by mother, father, uncles, and chorus; they all assume 
that he loves the votary of Artemis, although his statement to 
his mother makes clear his own attitude: in his wanderings in the 
Colchian land he saw many strange things, but 

I saw not one thing like this one seen here, 
Most fair and fearful, feminine, a god, 
Faultless; whom I that love not, being unlike, 
Fear and give honor and choose from all the gods. 

He regards her from the first as Hippolytus regards Artemis, and 
the parallel holds to the end. We find Aphrodite plotting the 
death of Hippolytus because he honored Artemis. 



But 



THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 39 

Theseus' son, born of the Amazon, 

Hippolytus, pure-hearted Pittheus' ward, 

Sole mid the folk of this Troezenian land 

Sayeth that vilest of the gods am I; 

Rejects the couch; of marriage will he none, 

But honors Phoebus' sister Artemis, 

Zeus's child, and counts her greatest of the gods. 

He knows not Hades gates wide-flung for him, 
And this day's light the last his eyes shall see. 



She feels nemesis because Hippolytus 

Through the green wood in the maid's train still 

With swift hounds sweeps the wild beasts from the earth, 

Linked with companionship too high for man. 

Such is the plight of Meleager; Artemis, in the guise of Atalanta, 
has come to destroy him as the price of the boar. On this subject 
Cornford, Thucydides Mythistoricus, p. 253, has an interesting 
paragraph. "The notion that a passion like Eros can be the 
instrument of the divine jealousy finds an interesting expression 
on a vase of the same class as the Darius krater figured on p. 195. 
In the central field the death of Meleager is represented inside a 
house. Outside, and on a higher level, sits Aphrodite, with her 
head inclined in sorrow, watching the scene. In her left hand she 
holds a bow and arrow; and beside her stands Eros. He is unmis- 
takable, but the name inscribed above him is not his own, but 
Phthonos. The significance is clear; Aphrodite symbolizes the 
love of Meleager for Atalanta, of which she is the supernatural 
cause, the paraitia; Eros-Phthonos is the enhanced passion which 
led Meleager to overstep the bounds assigned to man, and brought 
on the doom by which the jealousy of heaven is appeased." 

Both heroes fall because of an act of justice. Meleager slays 
his uncles for their treatment of Atalanta, and so brings about 
his own destruction; while Hippolytus is overthrown by the plot 
of Aphrodite, because he had scorned the love of Phaedra. 

The kommos describing the death of Meleager is one of the 
greatest in literature. Its structure Way has imitated in several 
places in his Translation of Euripides, to show only too clearly 
how great was the virtuosity of Swinburne. All words of comment 
are inadequate; surely Swinburne was right in this instance, when 



40 THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

he said that it was the business of the reader to rejoice in the song 
that is sung for him and praise the gift of the singer. As for the 
song, it is not his to handle. With this in mind, I shall try to 
observe due reverence for this great death symphony, although 
material for comparison is abundant. 

Meleager, while crowning Atalanta, is stricken with sudden 
agony from the kindling of the brand, 

and grasping his own hair groaned 
And cast his raiment round his face and fell. 

His father Oeneus leapt down 

And caught him, crying out twice, O child; and thrice, 
So that men's eyelids thickened with their tears, 

just as in the Medea, Creon, entering the palace, falls over the 
corpse of his daughter 

And straightway wailed and clasped the body round, 
And kissed it, crying, O my hapless child, 
What god thus horribly hath thee destroyed? 

Both dying men are brought home to the sound of mourning. 
Euripides' chorus draws a very sympathetic picture: 

Lo, lo, the stricken one borne 
Hitherward with his young flesh torn 
And his golden head of its glory shorn. 
Ah griefs of the house, what doom 
Twofold on thine halls hath come 
By the gods' will shrouded in sorrow's gloom. 

No translator could make Euripides approach the splendor 
of the passage in Swinburne. The chorus sings in two-verse 
groups, interrupted by three verses of pentameter. Alcestis 
wastes away in the same manner but to no such beautiful music. 
(Cf. Alcestis, 201 ff.) 

she wanes and wastes, 
Drooping her head, a misery-burdened weight; 
But yet, albeit hardly breathing still, 
To the sun's rays fain would she lift her eyes. 
As nevermore, for the last time now 
Destined to see the sun's beams and his orb. 



THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 41 

The chorus adds its lament; 

Cry, land Phaeraean, shrill and keen! 
Lift up thy voice to wail thy best 
There dying, and thy queenliest 
Slow wasting to the gates unseen. 

Hippolytus cries aloud in his agony; his mind is on his pain. 
Meleager, in thirteen stanzas, reviews his past life. His language 
is full of dignity, elegance, and poetic beauty. 

Hippolytus reproaches his father for his fate: 

Woe, woe for the son 
By the doom of his sire 
All marred and undone. 
Through my head leapeth fire 
Of agony flashes, and throbbeth my brain like a hard-smitten lyre. 

For gods' sake bear 
Me gently, each thrall; 
Tholi to right have a care, 
Soft let your hands fall; 
Tenderly bear the sore mangled, onstepping in tune, one and all. 

The unhappy onbearing 
And cursed, I ween. 
Of his father's own erring, — 
Ah Zeus, hast thou seen? 
Innocent I, ever fearing the gods, who was wholly heart-clean 

Above all men beside, — 
Lo, how am I thrust 
Into Hades to hide 
My life in the dust; 
All vainly I reverenced god, and in vain unto man was I just. 

Meleager has more self-control, and withholds all blame of 
his mother: 

Let your hands meet 
Round the weight of my head; 
Lift ye my feet 
As the feet of the dead; 
For th'e flesh of my body is molten, the limbs of it molten as lead. 

In this is a little of Phaedra's appeal: 

Uplift ye my body, mine head upraise. 

Friends, faint be my limbs, and unknit be their bands, 

Hold, maidens, my rounded arms and my hands. 



42 THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

Both Meleager and Hippolytus cry for death, but the cry of 
Meleager is like that of a delirious man; the pain of Hippolytus is 
more poignant. 

Hipp. 1370ff. Let the stricken one be; 
Ah, mine anguish again; 
Give ye sleep unto me, 
Death, salve for my pain, 
The sleep of the sword for the wretched, I long, O I long to be slain. 

Meleager desires to die, and even takes thought where he 
wishes to lie buried. He also gets a vision of the world to come. 
The gods are to blame for his ill-fortune. 

The years are hungry, 
They wail all their days; 
The gods wax angry , 
And weary of praise; 
And who shall bridle their lips, and who shall straiten their ways? 

Hippolytus thinks only of his pain: 

Ah for words of a spell 
That my soul might take flight 
From the tortures, with fell 
Unrelentings that smite; 
O for the blackness of Hades, the sleep of Necessity's night. 

Then for his comfort the voice of Artemis speaks, and clears 
him of all imputation of wrong. 

Unhappy, bowed 'neath what disaster's yoke! 
Thine own heart's nobleness hath ruined thee. 

He recognizes the voice at once; the form he has never seen. 

Ah, perfume breath celestial, mid my pains 
I feel thee and mine anguish is assuaged. 
Lo, in this place the goddess Artemis. 

Then she explains to him his plight and makes it clear why 
she could not save him; but she promises him venegance and a 
festival and a memory preserved in song. She urges him to 
cease hating his father, and, seeing the approach of death, she 
takes her leave. 

Farewell, I may not gaze upon the dead, 
Nor may with djdng gasps pollute my sight. 
And now I see that thou art near the end. 



THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 43 

His last words are to his father. I am gone; I see the gates 
of death; I absolve you, witness Artemis. My strength is over- 
come; I am gone. Cover my face with my mantle. The whole 
scene is full of pathos, particularly where the youth sees that his 
death matters little to the goddess, and is provoked to say, 

Farewell to thy departing, Maiden blest; 

Light falls on thee long friendship's severance. 

Lo, I forgive my father at thy suit, 

As heretofore have I obeyed thy word. 

And o'er my eyes e'en now the darkness draws. 

Take, father, take my body and upraise. 

Atalanta regrets coming to Calydon: 

I would that with feet 
Unsandalled, unshod, 
Overbold, overfleet, 
I had swum not nor trod 
From Arcadia to Calydon, northward, a blast of the envy of god. 

and later 

I would that as water 
My life's blood had thawn. 
Or as winter's wan daughter 
Leaves lowland and lawn 
Spring-stricken, or ever mine eyes had beheld thee made dark in thy dawn. 

Meleager realizes also that he is dying for the sins of others 
as well as for his own. Taking leave of his father, he says, 

O holy head of Oeneus, lo, thy son 
Guiltless, yet red with alien blood, yet foul 
With kinship of contaminated lives, 
Lo, for their blood I die; and mine own blood 
For bloodshedding of mine is mixed therewith, 
That death may not discern me from my kin. 

So Hipp. 1378 flF. 

Dire curse of my father. 

Sins long ago wrought 

Of mine ancestors gather. 

Their doom tarries not; 
But the scourge overfloweth the innocent — wherefore on me is it brought? 

Meleager claims 

with clean heart I die and faultless hand. 



44 THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

just as Hippolytus, 

Innocent I, ever fearing the gods, who was wholly heart-clean . 

So Meleager goes down to the dark ; 

Thou therefore of thy love 
Salute me and bid fare among the dead 
Well, as the dead fare; for the best man dead 
Fares sadly. 

Cf. Od. 11, 488 ff; Eurip. Fr. 537; and the motto of this play, Eur. 
fr. Mel. 536. 

Character of Erechtheus. Erechtheus may be viewed 
in four lights; as king, warrior, husband, and father. In the 
prologue he questions, as king, his mother earth as to the cause 
of the plague fallen upon his state. Proud of his ancestry, he 
pictures his land in loving colors, glances at impending ruin, and 
puns on the name of his adversary. Then he wonders why 
the gods have sent upon him 'the confluent surge of loud calamities.' 
His speech closes with an appeal for help. 

As a warrior he is one of those stout oaken Marathon fighters 
that Aristophanes gives such unstinted praise. In Aeschylus 
the type is well cut. He does not temporize or haggle about 
terms; he will fight and die or live, as his lot lies on the lap of the 
unknown hour. His fate is known to him, and with it he is in 
accord. By the Athenian herald he is shown to have attained a 
heroic and supernatural end. 

For Praxithea he is all love and admiration. He has found 
her always wise and perfect of heart; free from Hybris in pros- 
perity, patient in adversity. Swinburne has succeeded in portray- 
ing two strong characters in perfect accord. Both recognize the 
might of Necessity; both feel the injustice of Fate, while regogniz- 
ing the importance of their sacrifice for the safety of their city. 
The daughter too accepts her doom without a protest. The 
crisis has swooped suddenly upon them all, and they meet it with- 
out hesitation and with clear discernment. In the Iphigenia 
at Aulis the situation is somewhat different. Agamemnon, 
somewhat craven and fearing overmuch the host (cf. 1. 1012) has 
sent for his daughter for the alleged purpose of giving her in 
marriage to Achilles. His duplicity merits all the scorn poured 
upon him by his wife. But Iphigenia, after prayers and tears 



THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 45 

and lamentation, in a sudden change of heart expresses a willing- 
ness to die, and thus brings about a reconciliation. Swinburne's 
characters are more admirable; Euripides', more human. The 
English poet has given us a pair of philosophers who curb their 
own hearts because they recognize the need; the Greek has given 
us two very human beings who bluster and rail at fortune, to fall 
before it in the end. 

As a father Erechtheus is not well drawn. Although he speaks 
very tenderly of his child, he does not speak to her during the 
entire play. On the other hand, some of the finest touches in 
the Iphigenia come in the scenes where father and daughter meet. 
(1221 ff; 1255 £F.) Agamemnon's case is clear; the gods have 
exacted a price for the overthrow of Ilium, — a price which Agamem- 
non is not willing to pay, for it concerns him too personally. But 
his fellow-chieftains, less interested in the price, and more in the 
profit, insist on payment. It is not so with Erechtheus. The 
god so set the price of ransom that the roj-al family must perish in 
either alternative. To win, Chthonia must be sacrificed, and the 
king must fall; while the capture of the city meant the ruin of all. 
Erechtheus, under provocation, assumes a temper toward the 
gods similar to Althaea's, but under better control. He draws 
a sharp distinction between the saved cit}' and his own situation. 
The gods give to the citizens 

Life of their children, flower of all their seed, 
For all their travail fruit, for all their hopes 
Harvest; but we, for all our good things we 
Have at their hands which fill all these folk full. 
Death, barrenness, child-slaughter, curses, cares. 
Sea-leaguer and land-shipwreck; 

He graces Apollo with all his epithets, but reserves his praise. 
The grim situation he accepts because 

save this 
No word is left us and no hope alive. 

He recognizes the omnipotence of the gods; of their wisdom and 
loving-kindness he says nothing. A grim character, his language 
is very compressed; he says more in a line than is the wont of most 
tragic characters. He is stronger even than the Aeschylean Aga- 
memnon, who also put on the yoke of Necessity and became the 



46 THE INFLUENCE OF AESCHYLUS AND EURIPIDES 

slayer of his child. Both submit to divine decree, in regard to 
the justice of which both are in the dark. Agamemnon found 
it hard to sacrifice his daughter, but harder to become a Liponaus; 
the word is strong: so of two evils he chose what seemed the lesser, 
and offered his child to the malice of stubborn winds. 

Praxithea. Praxithea is in every way worthy of the love 
and respect of the king. Brave, dutiful, submissive, self-sacri- 
ficing, she sums up in her first speech her whole philosophy of life. 
Her heart is for her land; 'firm let it stand, whatever bleed or fall,' 
In her treatment of her daughter she displays the attitude of the 
best women in Greek drama. Swinburne could not, of course, 
save her from the long Euripidean rhesis wherein she calls the 
gods to witness her ills, and shows her great antiquarian knowledge, 
and her familiarity with the institutions of gods and men. She 
closes with a childhood picture in true Eripidean-Swinburnian 
manner. Both writers put such speech in the mouths of women, 
making them the source of diverse information and the fountain- 
head of tears. Swinburne, although he condemned somewhat 
bitterly the fragment of Euripides, on which he based this rhesis, 
owes to it more than he admits, and has not attained any startling 
superiority, as he implies in his letter. (See Gosse, p. 231.) 

Praxithea, in her farewell to her daughter, comments on the 
gods in Euripidean fashion. She is innocent of wrongdoing; she 
has suffered much for many reasons, without meriting any of it; 
but she will hold her peace. Having shown that from the heart- 
less gods comes no help, she breaks into a fine piece of Euripidean 
tenderness and pathos. The picture of the babe is one of the 
finest ever drawn. For her people she gives her child to 

Death and the under gods who crave 

So much for what they give. 

She sets aside, however, for the sake of her country her personal 
loss; it wrests from Ruin the power to take hold on Athens. 

When the herald comes to report the battle, she greets him 
with a fierce eagerness. 

Man, what thy mother bare thee born to say, 

Speak; for no word yet wavering on thy lip 

Can wound me worse than thought forestalls or fear. 

Learning the death of her husband and the safety of the city, she 
praises the gods of Athens and prays for death. 



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